Geraldine Feeney (Fianna Fail)

I support the call for a debate on the situation in our accident and emergency units and for the Tánaiste to come to the House. However, I know that many untruths are going around in some of the stories we hear. That is not to say there are no problems, there are, but they are not all on the scale of those we know of in Dublin. Perhaps when we have the debate we can look at the area of the health care professional and the onus on him or her to provide and deliver the service. The medics should stick to their jobs and stop trying to play politics. If consultants and doctors want to be politicians, let them put themselves up for election. We might have a better accident and emergency service if we had doctors who worked to capacity instead of blocking politicians who try to make the system work.